Whose Story are you living?

God is the great writer.  You are also a great writer.

Or you could be.

You are writing the story of your life.    But what if you are not telling a good story?

What if, dear friend, you are telling a sad story, a tragedy, a stuck in a rut story?

Stop it.

You are never going to get to rewrite the story of your life, but you can change the plot.

Today.  

I used to joke with Andrew that if he dies I would stalk and eventually marry my favorite (then unmarried) author Donald Miller.  He would then reciprocate the threat by telling me that if I died then he would marry the hot donut lady at Sun’s Donuts.  Fair enough.

Donald Miller wrote a number of books but my two favorites are Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  The latter of the two quite literally changed my life.  Miller discovered in the process of editing a book about his life that he, ironically, wasn’t really living a very compelling story.  He took a class about the process of film writing and in that class he learned that the elements of a good story are this:

the main character wants/needs something and has to overcome an obstacle to get that thing.

If Hollywood was pumping out movies about people who loaf around the house, going to boring jobs and falling asleep in their crumpled pajamas, they would go bankrupt.  We are looking for good stories.  And I think that is because we are meant to live good stories.

This got me to thinking.  Am I living a story that I will be proud to tell my grandchildren about some day? Am I doing the things I dreamed of doing or am I quitting long before the danger of success comes round?

I have been stuck lately.  Caught up in a cycle of depression deflation and doubt.  Like my feet are in the mud and my brain is in a fog.  I have become angry in my prayers and impatient for something to happen. I have told God that I am ready for his next call of action, I am so ready to do what he wants me to do.

Unless.

Unless it involves more waiting.

Unless it involves more patience.

Unless it involves more uncertainty.

I am so sick of waiting.  I want to go.  I want to go do something.  I long to fulfill the strange, wild calling I know he has for me.  But still all I hear is;

wait.

write

wait

write some more

grow

wait

something really big is coming

In all of this anxious prayer I have learned something.  I can’t claim to have stumbled upon this on my own.  My dear friend, Kristi, occasionally contacts me and has a word for my life.  This particular time, she knew that I was restless and impatient for direction.  Rather then rebuking me for my audacity to question the God of the universe she said this:

 

I would say that you don’t need to be reserved in your emotions towards God.  If you’re upset or impatient with Him, that’s the point where His power will be perfected in you.  He knows you’re human, Amy, and He wants you to separate you from your own strength so that you’re fully His and stronger and even more beautiful (if that’s possible!  You’re such a beautiful woman of God!!).  In any event, from what I know, it’s not a sin to be emotional towards God about life.  Look at the Psalms!  And Job did pretty well.  He was rebuked where he stumbled, but it was the discipline of a loving Father who restored him right after the rebuke.

There are hours of perplexity when the most willing spirit, anxiously desirous to serve the Lord, knows not what part to take.  

Then what shall it do? Vex itself by despair? Fly back in cowardice, turn to the right hand in fear, or rush forward in presumption?  

No, but simply wait.  Wait in prayer, however.  Call upon God, and spread the case before Him; tell Him your difficulty, and plead His promise of aid … and wait with simplicity of soul upon the Lord.

 -Spurgeon

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